Posted on 11/12/2019 10:18:30 AM PST by EyesOfTX
It generally isnt all that hard to know what the hive mind of the Deep State collective is thinking: Its usually easy to find laid out in detail in one of the reliable coordinating news organs. Most often, the platform of choice is either the New York Times or the Washington Post, but occasionally an alternative is chosen for this duty.
Todays cooperating fake news platform of choice is the ever-reliable and increasingly transparent Politico, with former Bush/Cheney/McCain adviser Juleanna Glover serving as the nominal author. Under a headline that reads Theres a Surprisingly Plausible Path to Removing Trump From Office, Glover lays out a process for the GOP-dominated Senate to remove President Trump from office based on whatever fairy-tale impeachment articles the House sends over to them, by adopting the same hide-the-ball tactics used by Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi.
Such an approach no doubt sounds completely plausible to Ms. Glover and her fellow DC Swamp skunks and snakes, given that they have spent their entire careers devising ways to deceive the American public by hiding the pesky truth from them. After all, that was how both Bushes, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama conducted their entire presidencies for the 28 years between the departure of Ronald Reagan and the inauguration of Donald Trump; So hey, why not do this one more thing that way? If youre successful, you might get another 28 years of uninterrupted globalist policies, by which time the American Republic would no doubt be well and truly dead.
Ms. Glovers proposition is both elegant in its simplicity and stunning in its mendacity. Here is the first key passage:
By most everyones judgment, the Senate will not vote to remove President Donald Trump from office if the House impeaches him. But what if senators could vote on impeachment by secret ballot? If they didnt have to face backlash from constituents or the media or the president himself, who knows how many Republican senators would vote to remove?
A secret impeachment ballot might sound crazy, but its actually quite possible. In fact, it would take only three senators to allow for that possibility.
[End]
See what I mean by elegant simplicity? Hey, it only takes three GOP Senators, and the obvious Usual Suspects are just staring us in the face right now, arent they? Those would be the same three GOP senators who refused to sign onto Lindsey Grahams now-forgotten October resolution demanding the House hold a vote to launch a formal impeachment inquiry, something that still has not actually taken place.
Within a few days of its introduction, Grahams resolution had received pledges to co-sponsor from 50 of the 53 Republican senators. The three holdouts were as predictable as the sun rising in the East: Mitt Romney, Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins. The three have differing reasons for their disloyalty Romney is positioning himself to become the GOPs savior should Trump be removed, Collins is up for re-election in 2020 in a very evenly-divided state, and Murkowski is just a classic transactional political skunk trying to leverage the Presidents support for her latest energy bill but the commonality is that they all maintain higher loyalties to their personal interests than to the well-being of the nation.
So, there are your three obvious holdouts, and no one should doubt their willingness to force any removal vote to be hidden from the public. Recognizing the skunkiness of her own proposal, Ms. Glover goes on to offer these senators her thin rationale for hiding the ball from the voting public:
During the last impeachment of a president, Bill Clinton, the rules were hammered out by Democrats and Republicans in a collaborative process, as then Senate leaders Trent Lott and Tom Daschle recently pointed out in a Washington Post op-ed. The rules passed unanimously. Thats unlikely this time, given the polarization that now defines our politics. McConnell and his fellow Republicans are much more likely to dictate the rules with little input from Democrats.
But, according to current Senate procedure, McConnell will still need a simple majority51 of the 53 Senate Republicansto support any resolution outlining rules governing the trial. That means that if only three Republican senators were to break from the caucus, they could block any rule they didnt like. (Vice President Mike Pence cant break ties in impeachment matters.) Those three senators, in turn, could demand a secret ballot and condition their approval of the rest of the rules on getting one.
Some might say transparency in congressional deliberations and votes is inviolable, and its true that none of the previous Senate impeachments have been conducted via secret ballot. But the Senates role in an impeachment is analogous to a U.S. jury, where secret ballots are often used. When Electoral College gridlock has resulted in the House picking the presidentthe House elected Thomas Jefferson in 1800 and John Quincy Adams in 1824that vote has been secret. And, of course, when citizens vote for president, they do so in private.
See what I mean by stunning mendacity? Yeah, every other impeachment/removal effort has been conducted above-board in an in public, but this one is different because well because thats what the DC Swamp wants, so lets make up a bunch of irrelevant crap analogies to try to justify it. If all of our talking heads on TV will repeat these talking points often enough for long enough, why, the Big Lie principle devised by the Nazis ensure us they will eventually be accepted by the public as truth. Hey, its worked like a charm with global warming, hasnt it?
Then theres this:
Theres already been some public speculation that, should the Senate choose to proceed with a secret ballot, Trump would be found guilty. GOP strategist Mike Murphy said recently that a sitting Republican senator had told him 30 of his colleagues would vote to convict Trump if the ballot were secret. Former Senator Jeff Flake topped that, saying he thought 35 Republican senators would vote that way.
Oh, hey, lets trot out former Jeb Bush campaign adviser and 18% public approval rating Jeff Flake two of the most pathetic abject political failures of the Trump era to lend further credibility to our evil plan. That should work!
Holy crap. You could never make these people up.
But wait, theres more! Next, Glover, on behalf of the Deep State arrayed against him, literally advises the President of the United States to just give up and negotiate a deal. Im not kidding:
While its unlikely Trump would support a secret ballot, its possible he might actually benefit from one in the long run. If a secret ballot is agreed on and Trump knows the prospect of impeachment is near, he could then focus his energies on his post-presidency. Once he leaves office, Trump faces multiple possible criminal investigations, at the federal, state and local level. He almost certainly knows that a President Pence could pardon him only for federal crimes. To avoid the prospect of serving time, Trump could negotiate a collective settlementjust as the Sackler family has done in the OxyContin matterwith all the jurisdictions now running independent investigations into his activities. Trumps impeachment, followed by a quick resignation, might appease Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vances and New York Attorney General Letitia Jamess thirst for justice, making them more likely to agree to a deal.
Dont you just love how this DC Swamp hack tosses in the names of Cyrus Vance, Jr., who refused to even investigate myriad accusations made against Harvey Weinstein who happened to be a big campaign contributor and Letitia James, who is the process of having her incompetence exposed in her fake case against ExxonMobil, to somehow bolster her case? Why, its almost as if the writer is as corrupt and incompetent as the prosecutors. Go figure.
But Glover isnt done yet: Theres one more threat that must be issued to the key potential roadblock in her Deep State daydream:
Even McConnell might privately welcome the prospect of a secret ballot. He has always been intently focused on maintaining his Republican majority in the Senate. Trumps approval numbers continue to languish, and support for impeachment has been rising. McConnell himself, facing reelection next year, has an approval rating of just 18 percent in Kentucky, not to mention that the Republican governor there just suffered a stunning upset in last weeks election. All of which suggests McConnell might warm to the possibility that he and his caucus could avoid a public up-or-down vote in defense of behavior by the president thats looking increasingly indefensible.
Translated: Hey, we stole the governors election for the Democrats when every other statewide office on the ballot ended up being a GOP landslide. How hard do you think it would be for us to get a Democrat elected to your senate seat, dude?
So there you have it, folks: The DC Swamp strategery in a nutshell, complete with the most un-American propositions possible and barely-veiled threats to the key players. Of course, what Glover and her compatriots fail to consider is that this is not a strategy for saving the GOP from Trump: It is in fact a strategy that, if adopted, will inevitably result in the literal death of the Republican Party.
Make no mistake about it, if a Republican-majority Senate chaired by a Republican-appointed Chief Justice ends up removing Donald John Trump from the presidency based on the utterly absurd rationale being pushed by the Democrat/media clown show in the House, the Presidents base supporters who currently make up about 90% of the entire GOP base will literally dismantle the party, brick by corrupt brick. There would be no going back from such a betrayal of the 63 million Americans who elected him in the first place and the millions more who have jumped onto the Trump Train since that glorious day three years ago.
In spite of that clear and unarguable reality, Ms. Glover, mouthpiece for the Deep State, ends her piece with this:
A secret ballot might get Trump out of office sooner than everyone expects: The sooner any three Republican senators make clear that they will support nothing short of a secret ballot, the sooner Trump realizes his best course could be to cut a deal, trading his office for a get-out-of-jail-free carda clean slate from prosecutorsjust as Vice President Spiro Agnew did. And if Trump were to leave office before the end of the year, there might even be enough time for Republicans to have a vibrant primary fight, resulting in a principled Republican as the nominee.
That, folks, is pretty much the most absurd thing you will ever read. This woman has a bright future writing fairy tales.
But dont kid yourselves into thinking these people will not try to go down this road anyway. If you see Sen. McConnell start talking about how a secret ballot is just peachy-keen with him, you will know the fix is in.
That is all.
IF only they spent as much time in running the country in a beneficial way for the citizens, think how much they could accomplish. I can’t think of a positive thing Congress has done since Trump has been in office. They’ve been paralyzed from any action other than impeachment.
Sure they do. Half of American voters already support a secret impeachment “inquiry” in the House.
Secret charges. Secret witness. Secret testimony. Secret trial. Secret vote to convict. Secret or false at every single step. The New Democrat way for America.
Impeachment in secret is not a winning strategy. Losers still losing.
If GOP senators go for a secret ballot, then we the people need to make it clear that we will not EVER reelect any of these Republicans!
It is high time for Pres. Trump to get very aggressive and go after these people! He might as well, they hate him anyway.
Collins can quickly be primaried and forced to tack right. If no rules get approved then so be it. Doesn’t seem like much of a threat
The Deep State is resilient, voters are stupid and they have short memories, but I do believe that if a removal were to actually happen, the results for the GOP short term will be cataclysmic. The Senate would go from a majority to probably less than 40 seats after 2020 and even less in 2022. The House GOP would be wiped out. Probably somewhere around Watergate levels of 140 or less.
If this impeachment nonsense keeps them from passing any other legislation, we'll all be better off for it.
And if the Senate coup plotters are very lucky, only the GOP will be destroyed. If they are less lucky, the US will descend into anarchy and civil war.
What has this country come to when everyone in DC can’t line their Swiss bank accounts with self-dealing ultimately paid for by the “little people”? /s
Best POTUS of my lifetime for We The People!
“Impeachment in secret is not a winning strategy.”
certainly not for the GOP, because removal of President Trump from office by the Senate would mean the complete and total destruction of the Republican Party and they all know it ...
so it’s fantasy to believe a secret ballot would remove President Trump; if anything, it gives cover to several purple-state Senators (from both parties) to easily vote NOT to remove ...
however, a secret ballot WOULD finalize the complete, total, and permanent distrust of the American public in the validity of their government
And how many conniving advisors could have foreseen Absalom getting his galant coif tangled among the branches?
The Lord works in mysterious ways!
Freaking hate the House of Bush-Rove and all the never Trumping neo con skunks.
You are correct. The Republicans in Congress are 180 degrees away from their constituents on: the war in Syria, the border, and China. If they had their way more troops would be in Syria, they would back track on border enforcement, and keep caving to China like they have been since Nixon.
So?
I’ve long made the assertion that a large number of Senate Republicans are prepared to give not only their political lives but their own lives to protect The Swamp.
Ping
Then they can launch their 8 year plan to get Trump, Jr out.
The tree of liberty...
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